Ken Smith, semi-retired American expat, living in Mexico for seven years after five years in France, a year in Denmark and another year bouncing around Europe — Italy, Switzerland, Germany, UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, Croatia and Romania. Here, for travelers, expats and potential expats, you will find news, experiences and advice.

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The following is the abstract of a Rand Corp. study on extending Medicare benefits to retired Americans living in Mexico. Click link at bottom to read the full report.

Why It’s Important to Consider and What Can Be Done

There is a lack of hard data on the exact number of Medicare-eligible retirees residing in Mexico, but it is at least in the tens of thousands and is certainly rising as the baby boom generation reaches retirement. Because Medicare does not cover health services received outside the United States, these retirees must travel to the United States for health care or purchase alternative coverage for health services received in Mexico.

There are several arguments for extending Medicare to Mexico — that is, allowing Medicare-eligible beneficiaries to receive their Medicare benefits in Mexico. Medicare-eligible retirees living in Mexico would certainly benefit, and Mexico might benefit from improved quality of care and an expanded health economy.

Moreover, American taxpayers might benefit from a reduced total cost of Medicare: To the extent that extending Medicare to Mexico induces Medicare beneficiaries to substitute higher-cost U.S. health care services with lower-cost Mexican services, overall Medicare expenditures might be reduced. The authors outline four options for how this policy change might be implemented and describe a conceptual model that could be used to assess the effects of each option.

In the 1990s, I had a syndicated weekly column about real estate, distributed by Inman News Features to about 100 newspapers and websites, including The Houston Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Times, Kansas City Star, and other biggies. This column got a lot of play on websites, but not so much in print — and when it did appear in print my comment about no longer subscribing to printed news was deleted. This was written 15 years ago and it’s interesting how many of the companies I mentioned in this article are now long forgotten. The style book changes are also interesting — Web is no longer capitalized and web site is now usually one word.

June 26, 1999

By Kenneth V. Smith
Inman News Features

I heard a radio news report yesterday morning that CompUSA may close 14 of its 211 stores and cut its labor force by seven percent. This triggered a chain of thoughts about how my own shopping habits have changed in the few years since the advent of Web-based commerce.

I wanted to know more about the CompUSA announcement, so I went to the news wire section on Yahoo! and did a search. Within seconds, I had my choice of a dozen stories, including AP, Reuters and the company press release. (This immediate access to real-time news events explains why I no longer subscribe to a newspaper.)

I learned that CompUSA will reduce its reliance on computer sales and turn its focus to consumer electronics, packing its stores with everything from video cameras to high-tech toys.

My son has an essay in today’s online edition of the New York Times. Justin is professor of the history and philosophy of science at the University of Paris 7 — Diderot campus. He writes that in the past year in Paris he has witnessed incessant stop-and-frisk of young black men in the Gare du Nord; in contrast with New York, here in Paris this practice is scarcely debated.

Does Immigration Mean ‘France Is Over’?

By Justin E. H. SmithNew York Times

PARIS — It is difficult to go more than a day in France without hearing someone express the conviction that the greatest problem in the country is its ethnic minorities, that the presence of immigrants compromises the identity of France itself. This conviction is typically expressed without any acknowledgment of the country’s historical responsibility as a colonial power for the presence of former colonial subjects in metropolitan France, nor with any willingness to recognize that France will be ethnically diverse from here on out, and that it’s the responsibility of the French as much as of the immigrants to make this work.

I was living in southern France a decade ago and planning my first extended visit to Paris. I fully expected to have at least some confirmation that Parisians are rude, impolite and sometimes just plain nasty. Even French friends in Nice and Cannes had warned me that Parisians are hostile. An elderly French neighbor warned me that store clerks in Paris always cheat when making change.

But, I just did not see it that way. Not at all. Bum rap. I found that Parisians are some of the most polite, friendly and considerate people I’ve ever met in any major city.

Here’s just one example. It’s early afternoon and I’m on Boulevard Saint Germain because I want to see and take a photo of the statue of Denis Diderot (more about why below). There are thousands of Parisians walking rapidly on the sidewalk. Most of these Parisians look like they’re getting back to the office late from the lunch break, worried that the boss will notice the late return. The occasional slow walkers are obviously shoppers or tourists.

Coaches for American style football in Thun, Switzerland. Left to right are: Martin Zurbügg, George Contreras, Ueli Sutter and Armin Haymoz

George Contreras could be an inspiration to any American who is bored in retirement and looking for something worthwhile to do. Contreras retired after 40 years as a high school football coach in California and has spent the last four years coaching American-style football in Europe.

Even after four decades of coaching high school football, he still calls coaching his main hobby. Following “retirement” in California, his first foreign coaching job was in Italy for the 2008 and 2009 seasons, followed by coaching in Sweden in 2010. This season, he is in Switzerland.

UPDATE: I’ve received an email from George saying he will be coaching the Bron-Villeurbanne Falcons in Lyon, France.

On a lark eight years ago while living in Nice, France, I decided to go to the Cannes Film Festival. No, I didn’t have an invitation to one of the glitzy parties. Nor did I have press credentials. Like thousands of other people, my plan was to just be part of the crowd.

It was great fun. I saw many people who looked like they might be famous, or maybe not. Once, I was in a shoulder to shoulder crowd where almost everybody was shouting “Zhorzhe Clooo-nee” (George Clooney). It was as though he was in the crowd somewhere, but I never saw him.

Maybe Clooney, maybe not. I didn’t know what everybody was excited about, and I didn’t particularly care, so I started walking out of the crowd and away from the commotion. I’m tall and large, and I don’t intend to be intimidating, but the crowd spontaneously was clearing a path for me. Then, all of a sudden, a very tall and beautiful young woman was walking along side of me. She had an air of star quality about her, but I had not the faintest idea of who she was. She had a faintly eastern European look and presence — maybe Russian, maybe Czech.

Then, I saw that the paparazzi were shooting stills and video of me and the starlet. Why? I wondered. Maybe later I was on the cover of a Russian fan magazine, with a caption asking (in polite Russian, of course), “Who is the old fart with Olga?”

For more than a century there have been many American blacks who found a comfortable life in Europe. When I lived in France the first half of the last decade, I had two friends who were young African-American women. One had been recruited to play in a French semi-pro women’s basketball league. The other woman had gone to France as a Christian missionary, but had a falling out with her church, found a job and a French boyfriend, and decided to stay.

These two women did not know each other until I introduced them to one another. They became friends and then had a running joke that they would sometimes get so hungry for a conversation in American English that they would settle for me, an old white guy.

I was reminded of these two women when I read a post on the blog American Black Chick in Europe. The post is about Whitney, a young black woman from Arizona who moved to Europe seven years ago. After trying the life in several European cities, she has settled in Stavanger, Norway.

Whitney has a blog, Thanks For The Food, where she writes about buying expensive ingredients to prepare healthy meals — ingredients that are expensive in Norway. While living in Germany, she wrote two travel guides, one of which is now in a second printing. I encourage a visit to Whitney’s About page.

I’m thinking I should plan an extended visit to Vietnam. I’ve never been there, so I don’t know how long “extended” might be. I could use my air miles (before they expire) to buy an open-ended return ticket.

I’ve talked to several people and read many others who have good things to say about Vietnam. Fascinating culture. Great food. Inexpensive living. Wonderful scenery. I recall reading one comment by a backpacker who said there’s not enough money in the world for him to return to Vietnam, but he did not explain why.

Several years ago, my seat mate on a long flight was an Israeli woman who had art galleries in New York and Tel Aviv, plus a studio in Hanoi where she lived half the year. Her specialty was working with artists who blend traditional Vietnamese art with abstract modern. She showed me her catalogue, featuring the work of a half-dozen contemporary Vietnamese artists. I was fascinated and ready to book a flight. I’m not an artist, but I like communities of artists and cities that encourage such communities.

I recently stumbled onto an interesting web page about expats in Vietnam. If you have even a faint interest in some day visiting Vietnam, it’s worth reading. Also, click on some of the links of this government-sponsored website. Tuoi Tre News, a media outlet belonging to the HCMC Communist Youth Union, is managed by Pham Duc Hai, its editor-in-chief. Like their Chinese neighbors to the north, it appears that the Vietnamese are successfully blending capitalism and western marketing techniques in a socialist government.

Whenever asking expats what they do not like about Vietnam, we often get familiar answers about traffic chaos, reckless drivers, degrading bus system, rubbish on the streets, polluted rivers or people’s unpunctuality.

However, when it comes to their favorite things about Vietnam, each foreigner has their own response based on their good memories of living in this S-shaped country, even though some have lived here for just a couple of months.

Stivi Cooke from Australia wrote to explain why he fell in love with Vietnam even though he has been struggling to adapt to the new life and to earn a living in a small tourist coastal town of Hoi An.

“The kids giggle, the adults smile, the food’s great, the summer weather is a dream, my students are very nice (usually!) and my local area is quiet at night. I often like to sit out in my garden in the dark late at night, drink a Larue and watch the stars on a clear, hot summer’s night with not a sound in the air,” Stivi listed favorite things from a simple daily life in Vietnam.

My son’s book

"With this book, Justin Smith turns the world of Leibniz scholarship upside down. Others have argued for the centrality of Leibniz's views on language and logic, or on physics and mathematics, or on theology, but Smith shows us how to read this key figure in the history of modern thought through his biology. This learned, original, and exciting book is obligatory reading for anyone interested in the origins of modern philosophy." -- Daniel Garber, Princeton University

Buy my book

Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball: The Best of Joe Bageant, available through Amazon-US. For this book, I wrote an introduction and brief biography, and selected 25 of Joe's essays published online from 2004 through 2010. Proceeds from sales of this book will go to Joe's favorite charities.

Quotes

"Leaving America is like losing twenty pounds and finding a new girlfriend."
-- Phil Ochs

"I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself."
-- James Baldwin

"Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen."
-- Benjamin Disraeli